Clear, perfect ruby right out to the edges.  A pencil-thin line of brick visible there.  Nose of broken lettuce stems with a slight match-head but dark fruit standing back.  Not pruney fruit.  It has a bright fresh nuance to it but is clearly GONE.  This is the weirdest GONE wine I have ever tasted.  As many of you know, I really love bargain-hunting and orphans and with that habit comes piles and PILES of totally gone wines.  But this one is different.  It is gone.  It is clearly gone.  But it is the brightest, freshest gone I have ever experienced.  It still has bright slivers of everything all through it, but taken as a whole is a thin watery muss.  But it is not corked, not cooked, and most importantly: not oxidized AT ALL.  Not a trace of pruney or maderized.  Actually quite vibrant, with a touch of acid.  the whole thing has just… thinned… out.  And we all have had numerous 20$ Aussie cabs.  They are not BV Coastal or Mondavi Coastal or even Yellow Tail.  They are fat extracted bombs.  But this bottle is the strangest past-its-prime bottle I have experienced.  In the mouth, round and full-spectrum, but just nothing there.  Watery goodness, as it were.  A little fruit, a little acid, a little tannin–and all gone downhill at exactly the same rate.  I can not help but wonder if the screw-top closure has had something to do with its relative balance in its vapidness.  This is the second-oldest screw-top I have opened, the first being a Wolf Blass 2004 a few nights ago.  It came with a much higher pedigree and a Stelvin closure–this Lindemanns cap has no markings on it and perhaps is of a cheaper, 100% sealed design rather than a Stelvin engineered to allow aging.  Whatever the case, this entry is more curiosity than an absolute *wine review* and am entering it only to note the curiosities it presents me.  This screw-closure situation is all so untried and unexperienced in anything much over 5 years old.  13-5   ◊